I was wondering when Mr. Sapohatan would get around to remembering us – and indeed, it has not taken him long. One last peaceful morning with Moeli, looking after the cubs – Helen is never keen on the idea, and keeps saying I am getting far too domesticated by the Hoele’toemis. The sight of me sweeping up the longhouse in my Native costume or happily plaiting rattan matting, is quite at odds with her notion of how a spirited Adventuress should be behaving. At lunchtime I was helping Mrs. Hoele’toemi with the cooking (at least I now know how to safely prepare cassava root, which is poisonous raw) and commented that our hostess really does not look like the mother of six large and sturdy offspring.

            Mrs. Hoele’toemi laughed, and pulled out a drawer full of engraved dance medallions and plaques from the past twenty years – commenting that a dedication to hula dance does wonders for the figure, as well as fitting one to other healthy pursuits. She looked rather wistful, commenting that dance had won her some very fine prizes – including, one suspects, Mr. Hoele’toemi. Our hostess is really very friendly and helpful, and has been demonstrating some exercises that she says will greatly help me keep my figure – not that I need much more exercise these days.

            I was just serving out the meal when a familiar guest in the household showed up – Mr. Sapohatan, who greeted me quite courteously as ever, and noted that he had been reading our reports with great interest. At which he was shushed by the lady of the house, for talking “shop” at mealtimes – which gives me cause to wonder about the family profession. I know that Jirry’s grandfather is certainly highly ranked in the Government – not that a casual tourist would be able to tell by looking at him. His Father is often away from home as well – folk vaguely describe him as being in the transportation business, though they never elaborate as to what or whom is transported, or where.

            Anyway, an hour later Mr. Sapohatan was sitting affably with Helen and myself on the porch of our small longhouse, as he looked through our reports and chuckled over some sections while my ears blushed deeply. I had feared that our final evening on the case would be a grave disappointment to him – but he seemed very pleased with what we had found, and by all the detail we had included.

            I had suspected we were not the only people gathering evidence, and he confirmed it in a roundabout way – casually commenting that I had been right to ask the question about Doctor Maranowski’s Ulm site as having possibly been sabotaged – but he had testimony from one of the original engineers that it had been quite volatile enough without needing any encouragement. Having the chief scientist of a project walking around an untested methane plant smoking large and foul-scented cigars all the time is no way to set a safety standard to one’s staff. One assumes that the Althing will enforce some more stringent quality standards.

            He did caution us that the Friends of German Opera might not be quite what it seems, regardless of how much genuine opera gets discussed there – and certainly, we are in no great hurry to return there. The “Oompah” bands are very lively and most of the discussion seems to be on healthy outdoor topics such as climbing, long-distance hiking and even parachuting as a sport – but we received the impression that it would not be as healthy as it would appear, to take too close an interest in the place.

            With that, he relaxed somewhat and brought out a second folder, a much slimmer volume, and noted that he had another job that I would be particularly suited for. It seems there is a certain Phoebe Carsholton, a wealthy girl about our age of the Berkshire Carsholton family, who has gone “absent without leave” for the past two months and is being urgently sought by her Guardians. There are private investigators on the case, but the Pacific is a very large place, and one could play chase-tail for years without finding someone.

            However – by the facts he had assembled, Mr. Sapohatan placed her as having travelled through Spontoon last month, heading in the general direction of Orpington and then Mildendo Island. Which, he pointed out, would normally be no concern of his – but her Guardians are kicking up something of a storm in the more sensationalist press about her probable hideous fate amongst the hordes of heathen savages (who always seem to be somewhere else whenever WE arrive anywhere.)

            Obviously, this is not great publicity, and having a stream of amateur and professional detectives streaming through after the reward money poking into whatever mystery appeals, might be something Mr. Sapohatan disapproves of on principle. Only last week the American cultural attaché was fished out of the lagoon, having apparently gone swimming with a metal detector and become tragically entangled in the seaweed. Too many such “accidents”, however provoked, would likewise be poor publicity – just the month before, a Security Adviser at the Vostok embassy had been forgetful of the state of the tide when he went solo cliff-diving. In any event, he was found at the bottom of the cliffs with a newspaper report on cliff-diving stuffed in his pockets – that would be absolute proof for a village constable back in Barsetshire, and is naturally quite good enough here.

            I volunteered to help straight away – though Helen looked rather unwell at the prospect of more ocean crossings. I suggested we follow in the missing girl’s paw-prints as far as we can, and see if we can find her and persuade her to return.

            Mr. Sapohatan looked somewhat pensive, and commented that he would be happy enough with her being found demonstrably unharmed, hopefully persuading the detectives to give up turning over rocks they would be far safer leaving strictly alone. He left us with the report, tipped his hat and left us to make our plans.

            (Later) Helen is looking decidedly unenthusiastic about this trip, having read through the information a few times. True enough, Miss Carsholton seems to have had a decidedly thin time at the hands of her guardians, having lived on an absolute pittance until she inherits the bulk of the estates on her twenty-first birthday. I have to admit, it looks as if she went “over the wall” the first chance she took, and is now enjoying some fine scenery and quite possibly fine company as well. Of course, it would be socially unthinkable to turn Native in one’s own Colonies, we have to keep up appearances – in an independent state such as Spontoon things are quite different.

            But – this is the job we are offered, and there is no use speculating without some more facts. At any rate, we are only promising to try and find her, not necessarily to hand her over to her pursuers. Tomorrow we pack up and head out – a distinctly open-ended chase, which we hope will not take us out to Japan or the Aleutian Islands. I am taking my dictionary along, just in case. It is an awful shame that we are missing out on Miss Pelton’s wedding – but Helen points out, if our Tutor had wanted her students around on the big day, she would not have scheduled it for mid August.

            One last evening under the familiar palm thatched longhouse – both Saimmi and Moeli came over, and we talked till late. It is really very sparsely furnished, when one thinks about it – but as in those traditional Japanese houses one sees in books, everything is exceedingly practical for its job – no useless ornaments or heirlooms cluttering the place. It amazed me how comfortable the wooden headrest was, rather than a pillow, and the Pandanus palm coverings are far more suitable to sleep in with oiled fur. Looking at the other headrest, I felt a definite pang at the thought that Jirry would be back in three days to find us gone. At least we are on official business, and can claim “the exigencies of the Service” as Father used to describe any particular hardship of Army life.

            One last note, dear Diary, as I leave you in Moeli’s care. Helen mutters that Moeli may personally like us a lot, but will probably mimeograph the diary and send it to Post Box Nine, while other folk telegraph back Home to bookshops enquiring after Lexarc shorthand guides. It is just as well that I sent the previous terms’ entries home by Registered mail, all things considered.

12th August, 1935

(Pencilled as “Transcribed from waterproof field notebooks, September”.)

A sad parting from the Hoele’toemis and the cubs, as we head out to Casino Island for the boat trip. I managed to persuade Helen to wear the safari suit while I stay in comfortable (but respectable) Native costume – we look quite the classical Huntress complete with loyal Native guide, I hope. Mrs. Hoele’toemi has praised my local accent, though Helen is recognisably Texan whatever language she speaks. Still, we both have alternate costumes in our packs, including the original parachute silk uniforms we threw together in the Autumn term. Although we could use some company, we are agreed that Molly and Maria would not be quite right for this sort of mission – they have many fine qualities, but discretion is one they need to practice a little.

            Indeed, I toyed with the idea of inviting Beryl – but there is always the problem of how much to tell her, and one suspects she is extremely good at ferreting out inconvenient facts. Plus, she seems to be having a good time at the Casino, something she will definitely be missing when term starts again – much to the Casino’s relief, I should think. Beryl has told us she can handle affairs with the proverbial kid gloves, but I have examined those gloves she wears. Conventional evening gloves do not have fine chain-mail linings or half a pound of fine lead shot sewn into the knuckles – at least, not in my social circle.

            Somebody we did see was Nuala, paying in a large sum at the bank where I was collecting my allowance – that banded tail will stand out in any crowd, and in a cramped bank I was quite conscious of her natural musk perfume even before I looked her direction. She invited us over for a meal tonight – sadly, we had to decline, and explained where we are heading. As Miss Carsholton’s case has been splashed around the more lurid newspapers for a week, there is no secret that she is being searched for. Nuala’s tail twitched somewhat, until we assured her we were not heading out after the reward – quite the opposite; we are paying our own tickets.

It is a good thing Father wired my allowance over - looking at the price of two flying-boat tickets to Mildendo Island, I rapidly changed our route to scheduled sea travel instead. I suspect it would be pointless trying to send travel expense claims to Post Box Nine. We did drop them another postcard though – the Western Onion Telegraph office is right next to the ferry company, and sells the cheapest postcards we have yet seen; everywhere else has extravagantly coloured local landscapes, but these are extra plain and advertised as “Now 15% More Generic!”

We did manage a quick lunch with Nuala though; there is an exotic Asian restaurant called “Bow Thai” not two hundred yards from the Casino. She tells me she is the treasurer for her “Union” and takes the other member’s earnings to the bank every morning. Quite puzzling – to judge from the size of the currency notes she was handing over, it must have been a very well-attended dance or native exhibition – I recall her telling us she was working in Entertainments. She can certainly afford to eat of the best on the house – she helpfully warned us off the “Nimitz Sea caviar” on the menu, which she claims is only eaten by the less discerning tourists who have not enquired as to the ingredients. Who would have thought one could make any sort of caviar out of sea-slug eggs?

            The docks were quite a sight, cargo and passenger ships queuing up to load and offload as we waited for the one timetabled boat of the day that passes Mildendo Island. Half an hour before sunset we were boarding from the jetty just south of the Old China Dock, where there are extensive redevelopment works in progress aimed for next Tourist season to take the bigger tour boats that are starting to arrive in these waters. The main tourist season will be over in another month or so, but the hotels certainly look as if they are making the best of the time remaining.

 As fitted her hunting costume, Helen had her target pistol in her baggage, all legally licensed and declared to Customs, and we both had those handy experimental parachutist’s knives in our belts disguised as electric torches. It might seem excessive, but had Molly been coming along she would doubtless insist on taking my Mauser “Big-game” rifle. At thirty-five pounds without bipod, tools, case or ammunition, she would be quite welcome to carry it around the hills and jungle trails, and any comments about me keeping in character as a “Native Bearer” would fall on exceedingly deaf ears. Anyway, at half a pound weight per cartridge, it would have to be exceedingly big and valuable game to make the expense of hunting with a 13 millimetre rifle worthwhile. I believe the original “game” cost thousands of pounds apiece, had a five hundred horsepower roar and a boilerplate hide half an inch thick.

            (Later) Thinking about value, for the price of a cramped wicker seat in the flying boat one gets a quite comfy sea cabin for two, with room service included. Helen does not look as if she is appreciating it, as she is out on deck in the fresh air, trying to compare stylish “mal de mer” with plain explosive seasickness. A great shame, since the evening meal was a very nice deep-fried fish and garlic dish that one could smell cooking from one end of the ship to the other. Helen should try to keep her strength up: we have an overnight crossing ahead of us, stopping at Orpington around midnight then heading out North into the open ocean – already the coast of Main Island is vanishing into the dusk, low on the horizon.

            We passed the last fishing boat just as darkness fell, and I recall from our Easter trip with the Noenokes that out to the north-east of the islands there are almost empty waters, with only the occasional Rock Goby to be found – a definitely barren area that they referred to as the Goby Desert.

            According to a guidebook I have managed to acquire from the ferry office, outside the Spontoon group several of the islands are legally in quite disputed territory – having a few hundred people scattered over coral quays is too small a unit to make a Government of its own, and the financial incentives are too low to attract any of the colonial powers (the tale of Spontoon being a commercial loss-maker is often bandied about, often I suspect exaggerated.) This rarely stops keen young Empire-builders such as King Zog of Albania, whose newly claimed South Indies are proving a delight to stamp collectors if nobody else, with local issues of stamps for every single inhabited islet. But this part of the Pacific is on the rather hazy border between Polynesia, Micronesia and the much larger Meganesia, and a lot of what Governments normally do is handled (or not) by private enterprise. One supposes anything a Government forgets to do, is blamed on Amnesia.

Indeed, many of the less famous dots on the map are still not quite fully explored, at least by Euro culture – if islands anywhere are in fact ruled by the sort of pulp horror comic “Thing” that our school chum Ethyl fondly thought ran Spontoon, this is the sort of place. We have heard tales of Cranium Island that makes one’s fur stand on end – “Truth is stranger than fiction” they say, and I recall some very odd fiction in Ethyl’s copies of “Weird Tails.” Ethyl seemed quite disappointed when she heard the true facts.

Still – I expect we are in for a tiresome time, hunting down one of my countryfolk who probably just wants to be left in peace when we do find her. In any event, farewell to Spontoon for a few days!

15th August, 1935

It has been quite an adventure already, just exploring Mildendo Central Island – and indeed, since we left the boat we have been really in the thick of things.

            We arrived on Mildendo just two hours before sunset two nights ago - one of the crew had warned us that it was far less “tourist-friendly” than Spontoon, and we should keep our wits about us. Indeed, there were no grand hotels or illuminations there to welcome us; just a rather battered jetty shared with tramp streamers busily loading and unloading unnamed cargoes. The place sweltered in a tropical mist, but we could see the jungle surrounding the main port of Toonabo Town, rising up in ranges of low hills. We have our aerial and nautical charts of the area with us, but they show very little inland detail, except that the island is roughly pear-shaped and about fifteen miles on its longest side.

            Certainly, the locals are not geared up for flower-garland receptions and public dancing. I suppose a lack of tourists = lack of tourist income = lack of developed tourist attractions = lack of tourists. In fact, our only reception was a rather snappish Customs official, who fortunately did not ask to look at my passport. I had my Spontoonie fur patterns in freshly oiled and cured fur, and did my best to imitate the local accent. If pressed, I can truthfully say I am speaking Spontoonie trying to perfect my accent, but was born on one of the other island chains (Britain being an island chain, so to speak. No need to say which ocean.)

            Quite a thrill, really – standing in the street of a strange town an hour before sunset, knowing nobody there and with no very clear idea of where to go next. But Songmark gives training in that sort of thing: we spotted a rickshaw driver and asked to be taken to the second best hotel in town; an expensive request on Casino Island but very obviously there is nowhere like the Old Vic or the Marleybone on Mildendo!

            Half an hour later – an Adventuress and her loyal Native guide were booked into our base on this island, a fairly clean no-star place upwind of the docks called the Stone Bure, an odd sort of building apparently designed by someone who had once seen a hotel from a distance and worked out the details from guesswork. The roof does not leak, and the water in the taps is at least transparent. Helen announced that after a day and a night being seasick, she was urgently going out to see what the local cuisine had to offer *.

            I suppose Toonabo Town is a “standard” Pacific island trading port, with functional but unspectacular buildings and rather more spent on freight handling facilities than sanitation. Helen has told me a lot about life in the oilfield towns, where things are distinctly rowdy at times and gunfire is a frequent sound after dark – happily it was nothing quite that dramatic for our first night.

            We had checked beforehand that Spontoonie “Shells” were acceptable currency here – just in case, Helen’s money belt held a small roll of gold Sovereigns to get us home if all else fails. That is the sort of thing they teach us at Songmark, certainly – never fly anywhere past half your fuel range, and never travel anywhere (if possible) without a sure way of getting back. Still, the eating-house we found to be very good value next to Casino Island – and two large portions of roast “Short pig” were very welcome. I wonder why they have to specify the length of pigs around here?

            It is going to be quite difficult to find this Phoebe Carsholton, given that we only have a stock photograph of her taken a year ago, and if she has travelled light enough to leave her name behind, we are reduced to searching for a recently arrived Euro girl of particular age and species. If she deliberately vanished, she may have changed more than her name by now, as I well know. Anyone hunting for me on Spontoon would have walked straight past me in Native guise, expecting no doubt to find me still clad in my tropical twill suit and solar topee (a rather useless item, far inferior to a local straw hat and a hundred times the price.)

            At least we are here, in the right area and settled in to search. Helen grumbles that a stream of qualified Detectives have probably already swept through here with years of experience and expense account bribes in their favour, but we will try our best!

* (Editor’s note – in plain text in the margin, this is labelled “Gonna git me a mighty pile of chow before ma belly fur wraps round ma backbone” – evidently Helen’s untranslated words. Amelia seems to do a lot of translating for some of her friends.)

next